Description

Gears of War is a tactical third-person shooter where the player controls Marcus Fenix, a member of Delta Squad, to save the human inhabitants of the fictional planet Sera from an enemy known as The Locust Horde. The story, played over 5 acts with 30 chapters in total, has the humans reunite their strength after fighting over cheap energy in the Pendulum Wars for many years, to face this new alien threat.

Unlike many other shooters, the emphasis is not on brute violence, but rather team-based actions and cover-dependent tactics. Gameplay requires to look for cover options all the time, from which the player then attacks, along with turns and rolls to quickly pop out. By holding a button, a "roadie run" is performed, to sprint to another location. Marcus is part of a full squad, but another human player can take on the role of Dominic Santiago to fight cooperatively (split-screen, system link or online). At times, the paths will even be split up to face different challenges. Players can only hold two weapons, a sidearm, and a few grenades. There is a selection of submachine guns, sniper and assault riles, grenades, grenade launchers, and pistols, but the main gun is the COG Lancer Assault Rifle, which can also be used as a chainsaw bayonet in close combat. There are also a few exotic weapons, such as the Torque Bow with explosive arrows, or the Hammer of Dawn, to make an orbiting satellite fire a laser at targeted enemies.

All weapons need to be reloaded manually. By timely pressing a button on a meter, the weapon is reloaded, with more damage and at a faster rate with perfect timing, or it gets jammed when timed poorly. Instead of health bar, the game has the Crimson Omen, a cog-shaped icon that fills up with blood when the player sustains damage.

Next to the Co-op multiplayer, there is also Versus, with three game modes: Warzone (deathmatch), Execution (deathmatch, but with the addition of certain "fatalities" to take out enemies completely) and Assassination (team played focused on killing the opponent's team leader).

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Novels

To date, five books based on the Gears of War universe have been written. All five are written by Karen Traviss and are canon material:

The first, Aspho Fields, bridges the gap between the first and the second game, as well as the battle of Aspho Fields, with takes place pre E-day during the Pendulum Wars.

The second, Jacintos Remnant, takes place after Gears of War 2, as well as one year after E-day.

The third book, Anvil Gate follows up from the ending of Jacintos Remnant, as well as the siege of Anvil Gate during the Pendulum Wars, during which Col. Hoffman was in command of the COG forces involved.

The fourth, Coalitions End, continues the story of Jacinto's Remnant and Anvil Gate, as well as bridging the gap between the books and Gears of War 3

The fifth, The Slab, deals with Marcus Fenix's time in Jacinto Maximum Security prison.

References

The achievement unlocked by defeating a berserker on hardcore difficulty is called My Love for You Is Like a Truck. That is a reference to the film Clerks (1994) where it is used as a line in a fictional, Russian metal song: "My love for you is like a truck, Berserker!"

The character of Augustus Cole (the "Cole Train") shares a name with a character to have appeared on the X-Files television show. The season two episode, Sleepless features a super-soldier of the name Augustus D. Cole, portrayed by Tony Todd, who has been modified to never require sleep. It is unknown if this is a coincidence or deliberate.

References to the game

The game is referenced in the movie Live Free or Die Hard where one of the characters is playing it at the beginning. It also appears in Disturbia where a teenager is killing some time with it.

Technology

According a news item from TeamXbox.com, and as mentioned in a podcast interview with Epic's VP Mark Rein, this game is the reason the 360 has 512 MB of RAM instead of the planned 256 MB. This modification of the system's hardware cost Microsoft an alleged $ 1 billion.

To convince Microsoft that the change was worth it, the guys at Epic took a screenshot of the game as if it were running using 256 MB.

Apparently the Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft Game Studios called Mark Rein to tell him that they had cost Microsoft one billion dollars, to which Mark Rein replied "we did a favor for a billion gamers".

Trailer

The game's teaser trailed used Gary Jules' Mad World as the soundtrack. That sequence was later spoofed through a teaser trailer of Battlefield: Bad Company titled Bad World. A link to the clip is available in the related links section.